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Robert Chaloner at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. DANA SHAW
Robert Chaloner at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. DANA SHAW
Chief administrative officer of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Robert Chaloner. PRESS FILE
Robert Chaloner, the chief administrative officer of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, is stepping down from his role and will transition to fundraising, full time, for the construction of a new hospital facility on the Stony Brook Southampton college campus in Shinnecock Hills.
Chaloner has led the Southampton Village-based hospital since December 2006, first as the president and CEO of what was called simply Southampton Hospital, and then as the chief administrative officer of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital since 2017, when the hospital joined the Stony Brook Medicine health system.
The idea of building a new facility has been on the table ever since Chaloner’s early days in Southampton, when he worked to reduce a budget deficit that he inherited, while also growing hospital services.
The financial crisis of 2008 and then the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years made the path to building a new state-of-the-art facility rocky, to put it mildly, but now Chaloner is looking forward to concentrating exclusively on raising the necessary funds for a $300 million-plus facility, after he passes the reins of chief administrative officer.
“It’s been 16 years that I’ve been in the role, and I’ve been absolutely thrilled,” Chaloner said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve accomplished a tremendous amount, and it’s an opportunity to now start to focus on other things, like working with the local community to support the fundraising of the new hospital and really step out of some of the day-to-day operating role.”
He said the hospital is in a “very, very good place” right now for him to hand the role over.
“Everything has its time, and it’s time for me to focus on getting these new facilities fundraised and support the community to do that, and I’m working with the Southampton Hospital Association and Foundation to define my role as I start to take that responsibility on,” he said.
The rest of the hospital’s leadership team will stay in place, he noted, and Stony Brook Medicine will start a search to find an administrator to replace him, which he anticipates will take four or five months.
“I’ll stay in place until that person is found and make sure that there’s a seamless transition,” Chaloner said.
When he does move into his new role, it will be under the auspices of the Southampton Hospital Association and the Southampton Hospital Foundation, which is the association’s fundraising arm. He explained that the association continues to own the hospital facilities, which it leases to Stony Brook Medicine to be the operator, and will own the new facility on the Stony Brook Southampton campus, under the same lease structure.
“We were getting ready to focus on fundraising — the Southampton Hospital Association and Foundation — and then COVID hit, and for the last three years, we’ve had to put those plans on hold while we’ve been dealing with COVID,” Chaloner said.
“We relaunched the fundraising effort at the last quarter of last year, and we’ve had some early success, but it really needs new focus. And my goal is to work with the Southampton Hospital Association and Foundation to really get that kicked into high gear now and to be able to have the time to do it.”
He said COVID proved the need for a new hospital.
“The facility looks good,” he said of the existing hospital facility on Meeting House Lane. “We’ve done a lot of work there, we’ve renovated every square inch of it, we’ve pulled in a lot of new programs, but it’s still, in parts, almost a 100-year-old facility. And it’s not where the future of health care is.”
The plan is to build the new facility without any significant debt, and there will be a large, significant fundraising target, according to Chaloner.
“Now that COVID is somewhat behind us, it’s an exciting time to relaunch this effort, and please join with us to help us get the new hospital that we all need,” he said. “And I look forward to working with everybody, and I hope we get the support that we need to make this happen. It will only happen with the community’s support.”
